Show HN: Tiny logic and number games I built for my kids

Nice work. I like the simple, unobtrusive and ad-free interface. I have kids who could use this although you face lots of competition for their very limited allotted active screen time [1]. The 6 yo gets 45 mins a week on the computer, usually opting for PBSkids, Kodable or Scratch. The 3 yo gets 15 mins usually opting for guided digital canvas painting as she learns to use a mouse.

There are a few good no-screen puzzle books for kids (lookup the ones by Usborne).

As a recent publisher of an interactive children's book [2], I am seeing more sales of the physical books than the digital/web editions despite the latter having more features including an element of teaching math.

Curious if you considered publishing a physical book with these concepts/math puzzles?

[1] This app inspires me to upgrade some of their passive screen time (TV) to more of your and similar apps

[2] https://tendollaradventure.com

min2bro · 22 days ago

Yes, I am working on a Activity book for kids based on similar kind of games which I would be publishing sometime later this year. I've published a Math Brain Teaser book back in April and yes I can see the sales going up but not significant though. I'm still learning the art of marketing. Would love to know if you've any tips for me since you being an established author

Math Brain Teaser: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F4PBNZWF

dskhatri · 21 days ago

I'm a debut author and not established by any means. I do have marketing experience and can provide the following suggestions:

+ Put all apps and books under one umbrella brand. Your book doesn't have a unique name associated with it. Little Math Genius or Little Math Whiz, for example.

+ Setup an umbrella website (littlemathwhiz dot com) and blog

+ Start aggregating a user mailing list where you can provide gentle updates (beta test new features on quizmathgenius, new book announcement etc)

susiecambria · 23 days ago

Holiday gifts will be ordered for fam, friends, and donations. Thx for the recs.

Prime Hunter sometimes generates sets with no prime numbers.

gjm11 · 23 days ago

In the few games I tried, it always ended up that way. You start with a few prime numbers (if you're lucky). Each time you click on one, it gets replaced with another number that usually isn't prime. After a short while, there are no primes left and then there's nothing to do but sit and wait for the game to end.

Perhaps all the numbers should have a finite lifetime, after which they evaporate and a random new one replaces them.

kevinventullo · 23 days ago

Or maybe right click to identify a number as composite.

kevinventullo · 23 days ago

Also, tiny nit but the text at the end says the largest known prime number has over 24 million digits. While technically true, the current largest prime number in fact has over 41 million digits!

(Also, I love this. I hope you’re still hosting it once I have kids)

jldugger · 23 days ago

> the current largest prime number in fact has over 41 million digits!

Because there's an infinite number of primes?

ethan_smith · 23 days ago

I can confirm this bug - your random number generation algorithm should ensure at least one prime appears in each set, perhaps by maintaining a pre-computed list of primes within your range and guaranteeing inclusion of at least one.

min2bro · 22 days ago

Sure, I will take care of it. Thanks for the feedback

mrgoldenbrown · 22 days ago

Yep, got stuck with this too.

dskhatri · 23 days ago

getnormality · 23 days ago

giantg2 · 23 days ago

I have a new suggestion. A guess the number game 1-100 in 7 tries or less. It doesn’t sound smart at first because its just guessing. However, if you always guess in the middle of the upper and lower bound, then you eliminate 50% of the possibilities. It's a pretty neat trick to get kids to think about how to approach a problem that seems random in a structured way.

nurettin · 23 days ago

Agreed! As an 8th grader I felt very smart finding the minimum number of steps required to solve this binary search using logarithms. It is also a great intro to algorithmic complexity.

Path finding in a 16x16 grid is also another great demonstration of BFS and DFS.

Using derivatives to make a targeting system and animating the result is another cool mathematical experiment.

wellpast · 23 days ago

This is great. I've been working on a social site where the content users post and scroll through are microgames (<500kb). My kids are my biggest users so far. My daughter loves this pill sorting game, for example:

https://xelly.games/game/b7eba4db-dc4b-4cfe-8420-3e42e494e52...

ArekDymalski · 23 days ago

it's really nice (both idea/purpose and execution). what would be really great is having direct URLs for each game so you can share and point your kid to specific puzzle.

2kblater · 23 days ago

I did something similar for my children – very suitable for ages 3 to 5: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3355240/Teach_Kids_Games/

swah · 23 days ago

Leaving the web environment makes stuff like this more exciting to me - is this Unity or Godot? Would love to learn Godot but have a hard time.

seidleroni · 23 days ago

This is really great, well done! I have two young kids and was thinking about putting something like this together and I'm delighted that you beat me to it. Having a 6yo and 8yo, it would be great if there were some more basic games as well.

fsckboy · 23 days ago

the 2nd game, click the prime numbers, my second board had only a 1 as a potential candidate, and 1 is not considered prime. the other numbers were all composites and I was awarded a big fat zero for knowing all this. (I went back in and the game does not allow clicking the 1, good; but the description "divisible only by 1 and themselves" doesn't really rule it out. maybe don't give 1's or explain this)

clicking the prime numbers is a bit hard to do, and they scooch out of the viewing area and disappear for a bit. not complaining but while i was figuring out the game on my first board, I did terribly because of that.

given the level of math proficiency required for the prime number game, I was shocked in the next math grid game when using the ascend/descend buttons it simply told me every time I had hit the right answer. thought this was how to play so I didn't try typing numbers in. on my firefox browswer the answer numbers are too big to fit in the cells.

bobthecowboy · 23 days ago

Likewise on the prime number game, I had a board with all even numbers >2.